in low-cost Ce-CoSb3 skutterudites在低成本的cost Ce化合物.pdfVIP

ARTICLE Received 16 Mar 2015 | Accepted 21 May 2015 | Published 20 Jul 2015 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8584 OPEN Solubility design leading to high figure of merit in low-cost Ce-CoSb3 skutterudites 1,2 2 3 2 Yinglu Tang , Riley Hanus , Sinn-wen Chen G. Jeffrey Snyder CoSb -based filled skutterudite has emerged as one of the most viable candidates for 3 thermoelectric applications in automotive industry. However, the scale-up commercialization of such materials is still a challenge due to the scarcity and cost of constituent elements. Here we study Ce, the most earth abundant and low-cost rare earth element as a single-filling element and demonstrate that, by solubility design using a phase diagram approach, the filling fraction limit (FFL) x in Ce Co Sb can be increased more than twice the amount reported x 4 12 previously (x ¼ 0.09). This ultra-high FFL (x ¼ 0.20) enables the optimization of carrier concentration such that no additional filling elements are needed to produce a state of the art n-type skutterudite material with a zT value of 1.3 at 850 K before nano-structuring. The earth abundance and low cost of Ce would potentially facilitate a widespread application of skutterudites. 1 Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA. 2 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA. 3 Department of Chemical Engineering, National Tsing Hua University, #101, Sec.2, Kuang-Fu Rd., Hsin-Chu 300, Taiwan. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to G.J.S. (email: jeff.snyder@). NATURE COMMUNICATIONS | 6:7584 | DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8584 | /naturecommunications